Working backwards towards you
by jennygiraffadil
Summary: Remus is having difficulty coping with the tension between him and Sirius at Grimmauld Place.


**Title:** Working backwards towards you.  
**Pairing:** Remus/Sirius.   
**Disclaimer:** I wish.  
**Summary:** Remus is having difficulty coping with the tension between him and Sirius at Grimmauld Place.

There had been tension right from the beginning and they both knew it. Not that Remus had expected it to be easy after everything that had happened, not that he expected some sense of familiarity to slip back into place - making it easier to pretend. No, not at all, he told himself, except, deep down, he'd sort of hoped for it, anyway. 

Grimmauld Place was depressing at the best of times and the longer you spent there the longer it sucked you in. But still he stayed, watching from doorways or behind closed curtains, watching as Sirius slowly tore himself apart because he didn't know any better. And, after a good few months there, Remus came to the conclusion (laid on his back with the starch-pressed sheets clawing at his spine) he realised then, he got it. It was suffocating and the way the floorboards creaked in all the wrong places when he took careful footsteps on a night to linger outside Sirius's old bedroom - that's when he got it the most.

"Remember when we were sixteen?" Sirius would laugh, hollowly, and he always spoke in fragments of thoughts, Remus noticed, pieces that only seemed to click together with the moon wavering just out of sight. "When we were young and could take on the world? What happened to us then?" 

Sitting in a stuffy red armchair with spirals carved into the thick mahogany frame. Sitting - with Sirius, he paused; his head falling barely to the side.

"If I remember rightly you were sent to Azkaban and I was, _am_, still a werewolf." 

Sirius didn't seem to hear him at first and he turned to look, hands pressing down fiercely against hips and folding creases over creases in a pair of jeans that should have been on a boy instead of this, him, them - thirty five nearly, thirty five and still nowhere to go. Not really.

"I -" And Sirius stopped, shaking his head. That's when it burned, spreading down his shoulders and inching across his body until his head pounded. It. The way Sirius didn't quite glance at him but Remus knew he was watching all the same.

But they weren't the same people anymore and he couldn't even explain it to himself without sounding like he was losing it. And, he huffed silently, maybe he was. Maybe he already had long ago and this was the price. A conversation leading into nothing but dead-ends with a man who wasn't even sure where he was anymore. Or who he should be.

"But that's in the past." he added quickly and Sirius shrugged down in his chair. Shrugged back against the stark white cushion and sighed.

"It should have been different."

And then Remus pretended not to hear until it was repeated.

"We should have been different."

But that's when he got up instead, tugging nervously at the loose button at the bottom of his jacket, and headed up the stairs.

_I know_, he'd wanted to say, actually, he'd wanted to say a lot of things. But, as always, he chose the safe route. And never slept a wink.

--

"Harry will be home for the holidays soon." Molly said that morning, stirring porridge with shaking hands but clinging so tightly her knuckles turned white - so tightly nobody would be able to tell, except Remus saw it. And he didn't mention it, but he sat down and said he'd have seconds, nonetheless.

"Something to occupy your mind, Sirius." Arthur piped up, doing up the clasp on his cloak from the corner, "The kids too. All of them."

And the vacant stare from the chair pushed back against the wall was all Remus needed to know. To really know. He shuffled his own stool along, tugging a trail of dust and old unicorn hairs, old footprints that never quite went away. He didn't touch him, but he didn't smile either and he wondered if maybe Sirius appreciated that more or if he really was just that empty now.

"You're not sixteen anymore." Remus hissed in his ear - nudging his knee gently, "But I trust you enough to hope you understand that."

He didn't glance up and he didn't see the way Arthur was trying to stop Molly saying something. He didn't see the way her lips were pressed into a hard thin line, wearing against her face. And he most definitely didn't see the way Sirius's brows edged into one another when he parted his lips, but no sound came out other than "I know".

--

_"Remus?" Sirius whispered against his cheek, "Remus?"_

He paused, but turned over fitfully in bed and almost forgot to smile until he realised none of it was real, anyway. He grinned, he pulled his lips taut across his face until his cheeks started to ache and he felt sick. 

"Yes?" he mumbled against the jut of a shoulder and an elbow meeting awkwardly.

He heard the rustle of dry grass and an enigmatic burst of wind as two broomsticks flew past the window, long robes trailing desperately behind.

Sirius shook his head and wrapped his arms around him.

"Nothing." he said, not quite kissing him, "Nothing at all." 

--

Fred and George noticed first. The polite conversation and the way they both took seats at the opposite end of the dinner table. Fred and George noticed because nobody else dared to and they always liked to believe themselves as being right on the 'cutting edge'.

They didn't say anything, but they exchanged looks more than once until Remus glanced up from running his fork over the grains in the table and widened his eyes.

It was after dark when it became more obvious though, more apparent, downstairs, by the hall. Sirius was crouched with his head in his hands and Remus was standing over him, defensively.

"This can't go on, Padfoot." he murmured softly before kneeling and hesitantly touching his fingertips to Sirius's neck, "It really can't. It's killing you. It's killing both of us, only it's a little easier with you."

Fred glanced at the shadows grasping the banister and winding their way up like vines. His elbow grazed George's but neither looked away.

"Sirius. Please. You're destroying everything."

And when he was on his feet, when his eyes were glowing like thin vicious slits by wandlight, Remus pressed up against the back of the stairwell, they both inhaled sharply.

"_Destroying everything_?" he growled, "Please elaborate, Professor Lupin, because I am rather under the impression that means there is something left to destroy."

"Si --"

They didn't see the almost brutal way Sirius's hands pinned Remus's flat, or the way his body kept him in place. At least, they didn't speak of it. Nor of the way two sets of lips crashed together with such bruising force they both swore they could feels the shudders on the landing.

No, they never spoke of much after that. But Remus was holding hands with Tonks at the next meeting and neither of them even questioned it. 

--

He was tired, they both were - and he needed to get out before it broke him too. He knew too much about survival, he'd read books and lived through it on his own for as long as he could remember. Sirius was gone, Sirius went away, Sirius didn't matter anymore. He ached, but he understood, and forced himself to move out of their flat.

He got a nice little bedsit above a shop in Yorkshire. It wasn't much, but he sold everything he owned when he laid it out in the exact same way as it had been before and kept expecting Sirius to walk through the door raving about how he'd been set up.

For seven years he'd thought that, hoped that. For seven years his heart had lingered somewhere between breaking and holding on. It wasn't until he saw him again, it wasn't until he turned up on his doorstep by Dumbledore's orders in rags that it finally went the distance. Sirius didn't hug him, didn't kiss him. Sirius stood there like a stranger, bowed his head politely and said "Lupin." - as if they'd never met, Remus remembers, and really, then, they kind of hadn't. Not like that.

He never fell out of love with him but he tried. He hid the razors so he couldn't shave, he fed him as much as he could possibly afford, he said and did all manner of cruel things just to try and turn him into something so repulsive his heart could move on enough to heal.

Yet there he was, thirty five years old and every sideways glance still had his throat tightening and pulse racing. Every odd smile made him wish, too, they _were_ sixteen again and could start over. 

"You don't know what it's like --" he told Molly, one night, "To have to live a life where your heart breaks everytime they're in the same room and you know you can't do a damn thing."

Because, really, that was only half of it. But he couldn't take back any of what he'd said. He couldn't pretend anymore that it was all over and he was fine.

He smiled at Tonks, he spoke to her, he even sometimes went for midnight walks with her out in the street. When they could go unnoticed, of course, when it didn't matter.

They sauntered back in on a Saturday morning, laughing, to Sirius sitting at the table with a mug of cold tea. The way he'd looked at them then, the way he'd looked so icily at his own cousin made Remus's heart beat faster - but, later, when he didn't do anything but say "Congratulations" it shattered again and he didn't know how many times he could pick up the pieces before he just didn't have the energy to bother anymore. 

--

"What the fuck is your problem anyway?" Sirius ground out between his teeth, not quite looking at him, focussing his gaze - instead - just past Remus's shoulders. Just past the back wall to the pantry and the bottles of wine all looked so much more normal right then. So much more - more homely. Except he wanted to break every single one. "What the fuck are you being such a dick for?"

And Remus wasn't sure how the answer. But he stepped back, just incase, and his eyes narrowed.

"Excuse me?" he said calmly, "My problem? You're the one who has been avoiding me for the past two weeks. You're the one who has been going out of his way to not speak to me. How dare you even suggest that --"

"You absolute _fucker_ --" Sirius spat out then and they were face to face, breathing hastily, heavily - furiously, "You - just - you - _fucker_--" 

"This is - shit, Sirius, this is just _too hard_." And their hips were so close the cotton of their trousers brushed and they could both feel it. They both wanted to feel it, but they pushed back, they pushed and pushed until something broke and Sirius was slammed back against the table.

"This -" he breathed, "Us - it's too - fucking - we can't. You don't --" 

"What?" And Sirius was speaking softer then, his voice pressing like gravel, like a force nudging against Remus to say it. To say something. But he shook his head at the last minute, he leaned in, but shook his head and stepped away.

"I wish --" he sighed, "I wish I had the guts to walk away and forget about you, about this, about us. But damn it, I can't, okay. I tried. And I can't. Because, right now --" he paused and gripped his hands together tightly, "Right now -" he repeated, "I know you won't come after me and despite everything we've been through - stupidly, that hurts the most."

Sirius took a few steps forward then, shadows and light inching like warm heat behind him.

"We both walked away." he whispered, resigned, "Just neither of us were brave enough to come back." 

--

The next morning, Remus still held Tonks's hand at the breakfast table but Sirius sat beside him until, eventually, he let go. First, of her, and then of every other little thing stopping his heart from breaking.

Because to start over, Sirius told him, you have to be prepared to give everything.

And, in the end, Remus sighed - Harry cradled in his arms before the pale grey arch - Sirius really had.

_Everything._

And neither could go back now.


End file.
